Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists. - Cornel West

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Love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it. - Cornel West

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If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf. And when you call for help, and that golden calf can't respond, you go under. - Cornel West

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A neoliberal disaster is one who generates a mass incarceration regime, who deregulates banks and markets, who promotes chaos of regime change in Libya, supports military coups in Honduras, undermines some of the magnificent efforts in Haiti of working people, and so forth. - Cornel West

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Larry Summers, I think, he had a long history of arrogance and relative ignorance about poor people's culture and working people's culture and so forth. - Cornel West

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You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. - Cornel West

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Black prophetic fire is the hypersensitivity to the suffering of others that generates a righteous indignation that results in the willingness to live and die for freedom. - Cornel West

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Poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response.

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Neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that's what Donald Trump is. - Cornel West

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Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people. - Cornel West

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